---
title: "Unique Interview | AKOOL Founder & CEO: Breaking Marketing’s Old Constraints — Building the “Adobe of AI”"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research (FFCAP English library)"
originalPublishedAt: "2024-08-21T16:00:00+08:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240821a05o4n00"
source: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240821a05o4n00"
language: "en"
cnSourceUrl: "https://view.inews.qq.com/a/20240821A05O4N00"
---

# Unique Interview | AKOOL Founder & CEO: Breaking Marketing’s Old Constraints — Building the “Adobe of AI”

_Unique Research · Interview · August 21, 2024 · Guest: Jiajun Lü (吕家俊), Founder & CEO, AKOOL · Interviewer/editor: Qiuping_

AI video is among 2024’s hottest tracks. AKOOL is a full-stack player — avatars, video translation, generation, face swap and film-grade effects — for enterprise marketing. Lü holds a UIUC AI PhD, Stanford visiting researcher time, HBS executive education; early ops at two B+ tech cos; 10+ years on person generation/processing; Apple and Google alum. Tagline motivation: ads bombard without immersion — build a “cool” AI marketing platform. ~50 people across 3 countries, 4 time zones, 8 cities.

_Interview highlights below._

**Q: Core advantages?**

**Lü:** Leading face AIGC edit/generation; custom solutions for premium brand clients (plus consumer SKUs). Full-stack ownership — algorithms, data, deploy — priced above peers; aim Top-1 quality or cut features. Deep lip-sync and face know-how; own architecture for clearer, higher-quality models; data from self-collect, purchase, partners (incl. film/set data). Algorithm cadence every **2–6 weeks**; two new models soon.

**Q: How do you position AKOOL?**

**Lü:** Build the **“Adobe of AI”** — an AI content platform for enterprises.

**Q: Team geography / customers?**

**Lü:** HQ Silicon Valley; Shanghai office; Seoul studio; staff elsewhere — distributed. Acquisition via flagship clients and case proof; product strength ultimately wins. Products are mainly standardized; brand marketers co-create; APIs for “Lego” customization. Vertical solutions (e.g. personalized video email for bulk send) shipping; China still early (MMS-like trials hit video-size limits).

**Q: Data / fine-tune needs?**

**Lü:** Pretrained models usable out of box; fine-tunes need little data — minutes of video → good fine-tune in **1–2 hours**.

**Q: Homogenized AI creative / Cannes CMO point on missing quality standards?**

**Lü:** Creative + attention are the point; hard to unify “good ad” taste — use **ROI**, brand memory, purchase intent. Differentiate vs free C-end tools by going premium B2B — high-value problems competitors don’t solve. Mature winners rarely win on one feature; chase shifting creative trends with a comprehensive product aimed at enterprise.

**Q: Copyright / misuse?**

**Lü:** Tools assist creation; copyright and liability sit with creators (Adobe/Word analogy — vendor isn’t liable for user content). Users must own rights to uploads.

**Q: U.S. brand adoption vs China; marketer misconceptions?**

**Lü:** Big brands still early — adoption maybe **<0.1%** yet market already large; at 10%+ scale expands sharply. Brands cautious on IP/PR; smaller brands move faster. Those who try see traffic and clear ROI. Marketers fear replacement — tools still need human oversight at high standards; urgent task is learning AI to raise throughput; lowers skill floor, raises industry competition (search-auction dynamic).

**Q: Dependent on underlying foundation models?**

**Lü:** Better speech/text/video/image models enrich UX, but the biggest gap remains **excellent effect** — brands care about ROI. Many products sit on the usable/unusable edge until models mature.

**Q: Other hard parts / market education?**

**Lü:** Pick real market needs; keep fast iteration and stickiness or education spend trains customers for someone else. Video outputs are intuitive — education cost lower than many categories; start simple UI, then unlock advanced features. **\>95%** customers overseas; overseas wants less customization than China — transplanting China custom know-how could be an edge. Country buying styles differ (some decide before sales call; others never close).

**On China vs U.S. AI entrepreneurship:** paces roughly parallel; broad participation and comparable product/tech levels from his overseas-focused vantage.

— END —

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Editorial English edition published on UniqueCapital: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240821a05o4n00
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/20240821a05o4n00